Building trust, habits and loyalty — CXL Digital Psychology and Persuasion Minidegree Review — Part 5

This is part 5 out of 12 reviewing the digital psychology and persuasion minidegree at CXL Institute. For 12 weeks, I will deep-dive into areas such as psychology foundations, neuromarketing, persuasion models and behavioral psychology. Each week I will post one article reviewing the course content and discuss my learnings as well as my personal thoughts on it.

Trust

In the first lesson of this course, the different stages of trust are described. When a customer builds a relationship with a brand they advance through the different stages below.

When a potential customer arrives at a website they are at the bottom of the pyramid and no trust is established yet. Therefore it is important that what they face is aligned with their trust. Asking the customer for sensitive information can not be done until trust is built if you want a positive outcome. One way to increase conversions is to allow guest check-out, by doing that more customers will complete their purchase even if trust is not established.

BJ Fogg’s credibility factors

The following 10 factors are increasing perceived credibility in websites:

1. Appropriate design — the design needs to be relevant for what your company do

2. Easy verification — the information that is provided on the website such as research studies has to be able to verify

3. Show you are real — by writing about the founder, show the colleagues of the company, showing a street address, etc you show that you are real.

4. Prove expertise — show certifications, degrees, etc

5. Real (trustworthy) humans — by adding a personal background to the presentation of the founder or employees this can be achieved.

6. Easy to contact — there more ways the better

7. Easy to use — a site that is easy to use is perceived as more credible

8. Update often — fresh information makes your website more trustworthy

9. Limit promotion/ads

10. Avoid all errors — tech errors and misspellings reduce the credibility

Reviews

Customer reviews increase trust. In different research studies, reviews have been proven to be one of the most important factors for perceived trust in websites. 68% trust reviews more when there are both good and bad reviews and 95% distrust the reviews if there are only good ones.

Domain trust

Domain names can be an important factor for trust. In general familiar/branded domains, simple/short domains and domains including .com increase credibility.

Improving your photographs

The left side of the face is usually perceived as more attractive than the right side. The reason for this could be that the muscles of the left side of the face are controlled by the right side of the brain that is involved with emotional expression.

For men the right side is perceived as more dominant and powerful, not necessarily more attractive.

Larger pupils make you more attractive and trustworthy and a thicker limbal ring makes you more attractive. When we are young we tend to have thicker limbal rings so this indicates health and youth.

A small smile and slight eyebrow raise increase trustworthiness. A smaller smile communicates intelligence and trustworthiness whereas a bigger smile communicates dominance and friendliness.

In dating women who smile and look happy are perceived as the most attractive ones but for men it is the opposite.

Direct gaze is most attractive.

One drink makes you more attractive to people viewing the photo. But having an alcoholic beverage in the photo makes your IQ being perceived as lower.

Trust symbols

Trust symbols increase trust. People will feel safer to share sensitive information etc if your site is using trust badges. A familiar trust seal is generally correlating with perceived trust.

Building habits and loyalty

We want our customers to buy but we also want them to come back and be loyal. There are different ways to achieve this. In this lesson, Roger Dooley talks about customer loyalty and how to form habits.

Many people equalize rewards and loyalty. But according to Roger a reward program is a good way of bringing people into your territory but what creates true loyalty is a combination of reward and customer experience.

Rewards reinforce behavior. There are fixed rewards such as ”Every 15th pocketbook for free” where you as a customer know what to do to get the reward. These rewards need to come regularly to be effective.

There are also variable rewards that are not as predictive as fixed rewards. Variable rewards include surprise and delight. Wheater the reward is fixed or variable it needs to be achievable and desirable.

Goal gradient hypothesis & endowed progress effect

The closer we get to our goal the faster we will work to achieve it. A study has shown that if you have a coffee card with 10 spaces you will consume coffee faster as you get closer to filling up the card with stamps. Another study had a coffee card with 12 spaces but two of them were prefilled. What happened was that the goal gradient effect kicked in and the people consumed coffee faster even if there still were 10 spaces to fill.

How to increase motivation in rewards programs

Apart from using the goal gradient effect and set goals, you can also increase motivation by showing the customer’s progress visually. When the customer joins your reward program you can also give them free credit so they don’t feel like they start from zero. Being fair with the reward program rules is also contributing to increased motivation.

Counterfactual reflection and slip-ups

Counterfactual reflection refers to thoughts that are focused on possible alternatives to life events that have already happened — ”what if’s”. Counterfactual reflection increases loyalty so if you can make your customers reflect on what it would be like not having your product or service they will be more loyal to you.

Bad behavior can invoke revenge. When a loyal customer is upset the best way to solve the problem is to apologize, without excuses. This will decrease their need of seeking revenge.

The hooked model

The hooked model is a model created by Nir Eyal that explains how products can become habits. In his book ”Hooked: How to build habit-forming products” he looks at the success behind companies like Instagram, Google and Facebook. According to him, their success is built on the hooked model. The hooked model involves the steps trigger, action, reward and investment.

The first step in the process is the trigger. In the beginning, the trigger is external and could be an e-mail, ad, notification, etc that tells you what to do. The goal is to make the trigger internal so it rises from emotion instead of external stimuli. In general, the most successful companies use both kinds of triggers.

The trigger then leads to action such as opening an app, go to a website, post something or like something. When an action has been taken a reward is received. The reward could be likes, comments, shares or information (Google).

The next phase is called investment and is referring to when using the product stores value. After a while with the product, the customer is invested and skilled with it and by then it is difficult to make his or her switch to another similar product.

The action and investment then create the next trigger.

Summary of the fifth week

Just as last week I learned so many new things this week. One lesson I found extra interesting was the lesson about improving photography. The thought that we might have one better-looking side of the face never occurred to me before. The learnings from this lesson show that choosing your photos wisely can have a huge impact on the viewer’s perception. I also found the goal gradient hypothesis fascinating. I never realized that those prefilled spaces on those cards would make me consume faster.

Next week I will cover the topics digital psychology and behavioral design, stay tuned for more updates!